Sunday, June 23, 2013

Identity Crisis

Luke 8:26-39

June 23, 2013

If
you look on the big wall in my office, you’ll see among the pictures that hang
there, a work of embroidery made for me by my mother.It’s a poem that I wrote when I was seven.She loved the poem and saved it for years,
always with the intent of making it a gift for me.She says that it is proof I was a
well-adjusted child.This is the poem
entitled, “A Wish.”

“I
wish I were a teacher.Or even a nurse.Or a mother with children all around
her.I wish I had a husband who was a
millionaire.But I am just glad to be
me.Because Amy Busse is me and that is
that.”

If
I could make a wish today, it would be to talk with my seven-year-old self and
discover what it was that made her happy to be her.What did she know about herself that made her
so fundamentally content with the person she was?How did the seven-year-old Amy have such a
solid understanding of what it means to be Amy?Because I can tell you that since that time I haven’t always had that understanding.

I
don’t think that I’m necessarily outside of the norm by admitting that.I think that one of the challenges we often
face as we grow up and grow older is trying to figure out who we are in the
midst of all of the good and the bad that we encounter and endure.The self-assuredness I had at seven was lost
to the self-consciousness of adolescence.It began to come back as I entered into adulthood, but it was never
quite the same because I wasn’t the same.Who is?All that you experience,
good and bad, shape you.What you learn,
what you see, who you meet, the loves and the losses, the joys and the
heartbreaks – all those pieces and parts of our lives shape us, shape our
identities.And, at least for me, at
different times in my life, I have wrestled with the question of “Who am
I?”

I
realize the pain I’ve felt during my times of identity wrestling is a far cry
from the pain this man, this demoniac, endures.What was considered demonic possession at that time would be mental
illness to us.Surely the man was
suffering from some sort of personality disorder or schizophrenia.But then or now, putting a name on it doesn’t
lessen or change the pain someone in its grip experiences.

Think
about how awful this man’s life must have been.He was a man of the city.Does
this mean that once upon a time he was an upright citizen?Fully functioning and capable?A person with family and friends, a
profession, a life?But something
changed for him.For a long time he went
naked.He no longer had a house, but he
lived in the tombs, which was probably its own sort of wasteland, its own sort
of wilderness.He was kept under guard,
for the city’s protection and for his own.Yet even shackles and chains could not hold him.He would break out of them and be driven by
his demons “into the wilds.”The demons
drove him to break loose but he could never break free.It was a nightmarish existence.

Then
Jesus arrives.Jesus and his disciples
have just come from a trip in a boat.While they were sailing they were assailed by a terrible storm.Jesus calmed it with a word.Now that they have crossed over to dry land,
Jesus is confronted with the storm that rages inside this man.

This
story is found in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke.Luke tells us that when the man sees Jesus,
the demons in him cry out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most
High God?I beg you, do not torment me.”This is not the first time we have heard of
demons recognizing Jesus as the Son of God before the people do.

I
find it interesting that, if I’m reading it correctly, Jesus has made one
attempt at commanding the demons to leave the man.It’s almost as if their words are in response
to his command.What changes everything
is when Jesus asks the man, “What is your name?”His answer?“Legion.”

To
us, hearing the word legion probably translates to “a great number” or “many”
or “a whole bunch.”But the people
hearing this would have had a clear picture of what a legion was.These were people living under Roman
occupation.A legion of Roman soldiers
was a troop of 5,000 to 6,000 men.That
goes well beyond my initial definition of “legion.”

If
the demons possessing this man are legion, then how could there be anything
left of him?But Jesus asking that
question, “what is your name?” opens the door for them to leave.They did not want to go back to the abyss so
they beg Jesus to let them enter into a herd of swine feeding on a
hillside.Jesus gives them
permission.The demons rush out of the
man, enter the pigs and run into the lake and drown.

This
is the point in the story where I think many of us stop listening because we’re
horrified at either the animal cruelty that’s involved here or the lost
livelihood to the people who owned those pigs.But right or wrong, I think we need to get past that and pay attention
to what happens next.We need to pay
attention to the people’s response to the man.The swineherds have witnessed this, so they run off to tell everyone in
the city and the country just what’s happened.The people come out to see for themselves and what do they find?This man, who had been so completely
possessed by demons that almost nothing of him was left, was now clothed.He was in his right mind.He was seated at the feet of Jesus, the place
where disciples sit.Did the people upon
seeing this rejoice?Did they run with
tears in their eyes and hug the man, their friend, their neighbor, returned to
them at last?Did they thank Jesus for
giving them back one of their own?No.They were afraid.Luke says that they were “seized with great
fear.”Sounds almost like another sort
of demon possession doesn’t it?

They
were seized with great fear.So Jesus
gets back in the boat to return to the other side, to Galilee.The man – now healed and whole – begs Jesus
to let him go along.But Jesus tells him
to go home and tell the people at home how much God has done for him.

It
is remarkably hard to preach on demons in our modern age, because we know that
so many illnesses at that time, mental or physical, were blamed on demonic
possession or the person’s own sinfulness.Now we know better.Now we know
that illnesses are not caused by the supernatural.We have technology and medicine and
astonishing scientific advances and I am grateful for it all.Miracles happen every day because of
them.But I think we also have our share
of demons.

I
am not speaking of the supernatural when I say that.I’m speaking more of our struggles, our
pains, our fears.If someone is dealing
with addiction, isn’t that its own sort of demon?Anxiety, shame, loneliness – all of those are
demons to the ones who can’t seem to break free.

The
problem as I see it is that too often it is our demons that define us.We tend to become what assails us.At the points in my life when I’ve had what
could be termed an identity crisis, it’s because I couldn’t figure out who I
was beyond the roles that I carry – mother, teacher, preacher, daughter, friend
– and because I couldn’t see myself beyond what has most wounded me.Too often we define ourselves more by what
assails us, the wounds, the mistakes, the heartaches, the demons.

But
we are more than our worst mistake.We
are more than the sum of our fears.We
are more than the broken places inside of us.We are more than the demons that try to possess us.We are children of God.To say that is not to say that we are not
unique individuals with our own unique identities.To say that we are children of God is to say
that we are claimed by something greater than ourselves.It is to acknowledge that fundamentally we
carry the spark of the divine within us.In claiming that, we have the opportunity to realize that our identities
are formed not merely by what assails us but by love, forgiveness, hope.In seeing our identities first and foremost
as children of God, we have the chance to become the opposite of the community
that regarded the man’s healing with fear.We can be the ones who rejoice.Too often we hold onto what’s bad because it’s familiar.And a familiar evil is far better than a
potentially unknown evil.But knowing
that we are children of God means that we can let all of that go.Our identities, individually and as a
community, are created more by love than fear.

In
a few minutes we will participate in a baptism.This is one of my favorite duties as a minister, but it is more than
just a sweet moment.This little one’s
family, her parents, grandparents, and all of us are saying that this child of
God is claimed by love. We will make promises to help her and her family
understand and remember that most important truth.She is a child of God.That is her identity.And whatever this little one encounters in
her life, all of the good and all of the bad, her identity as a child of God
will never change.She is a beloved
child of God.So are we.Let all of us, God’s children, say, “Amen.”